


Pocket Monsters

by Nullescience



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 07:34:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24509983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nullescience/pseuds/Nullescience
Summary: An autistic boy moves with his mother to a new town in the countryside, only to discover that there are monsters living here. And not all of them are human.





	1. The Rat

**The Rat**

I was twelve when I saw the first monster. There had been a storm that night. I could remember that much. The kind of storm that comes once a summer, where the sound of pouring rain drowns out your thoughts and the crack of thunder breaks what remains. That had been the night that I first saw it. 

I had grown up in a poor neighborhood. South-side of Chicago, near Fuller Park. But that summer had moved out with my mom to the countryside. The edge of suburbia. The house that we had moved into had this strange and empty feeling that all old but now new homes do. It reminded me of the feeling you get putting on someone else’s shoes by mistake. My computer and comic books were all still packed away in one of a million unlabelled cardboard boxes, which I had to navigate like a maze just to get to my room. 

So, having little else to do with my time, I decided to read. Horror stories. Stephen King specifically. I had found the box with some of my other favorite books and I was thankful for that at least. I sat by the window, looking outside, at the rain from time to time. Imagining things. I had a crazy imagination back then, sometimes to the point of even seeing things that weren’t there. I had been that way ever since my dad died. 

There was a flash of lightning and I looked up again. It was dark now. Well past nine o'clock and almost bedtime. I didn’t know how I saw it but as I was turning back to my book, something caught my eye. Something yellow, down in the cul de sac below. My breath fogged on the glass and I had to wipe this away with my shirt sleeve. But no, there was definitely something out there. It looked like a rat, crawling along the gutters. A large, yellow rat. I blinked, my face now pressed up against the window. Eyes peeling.

There was another flash and I fell back into the bed. The image of the lighting had been burned into my retina, a phosphorescent crack which tracked with my vision wherever he looked. I could still hear the thunder as well, ringing around deep inside my ears. Boom, boom, boom. Gradually, the image and the ringing died away. I figured that I must have screamed because the next thing I knew there was a knock on the door.

“Ashton? Are you in there?"

“Yeah.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, Mom."

A pause. She wasn’t sure. 

“I’m fine mom," I said, annoyed. “It was just the lightning.”

She left. And as soon as she did I climbed back up to the bedroom window. I forced the window open. Gazing through the rain, now very interested indeed because it had looked for a second there like that lightning had struck the exact spot where that poor rat had been. I expected to see a sooty, black crater, like in the cartoons. But nothing, it was gone. 

The next morning came with no signs of the chaos that had come the night before. By the time I got up, around 7am, the sun had already dried out all of the streets and birds were madly chirping. I tugged on my jeans, one leg at a time, brushed his teeth, and headed downstairs. There my mom was waiting for me. She handed me a tall glass of OJ as she always did. I sat at the table, same as always. Just because it was a new house didn't meant you did away with routine.

“Oh shoot,” Mom cursed. She had been pouring cereal for me, my favorite Kellogg's Corn Flakes, when she had noticed something behind the toaster. She reached over and pulled back the plug. It looked chewed through, with tiny, little copper wires fanning out like a broom handle. “I’m sorry honey,” she said at last, “looks like this house does have mice after all.” Her hands hugged her hips. “I knew those were droppings. I tell you I got some choice words for that realtor right now. That’s for sure.”

“I think I saw one.” I said, taking a sip of my juice. “Last night. In the street outside of our house."

“You saw a mouse?”

“Well,” I corrected myself, “it was more like a rat. Big enough that I could see it from the upstairs window.”

My mom frowned. “Hush child. Ain't no rats living in this house. It’s old but...” she kissed her teeth and shook her head. Trying to convince herself that their new home wasn't really as bad as it was. “No, no rats here.”

“But I…”

The toaster thunked inside the trash can. My mom frowned again, then checked the time. “Here,” she said, sliding the cereal in front of me. “You’re gonna have to scarf that down if you wanna make the bus.”

A short time later I was standing by myself out at the bus stop. A bright, yellow school bus pulled up, it's wheels squealing to the curb. Reluctantly, I climbed aboard. I sat in the back and watched the other kids. It looked like they all knew each other, because of course they did. Why wouldn't they? I was the new kid. The kids chattered to each other, recounting what they had done over summer vacation, or the cool new video game they got for their birthday or how this year their soccer team was finally gonna beat the Wheaton Tigers. I listened.

“Anyone sitting here?” a voice said. I stopped my eavesdropping and looked up. There was this girl standing in the aisle. She looked to be about a grade or two older than me and even more peculiar than most girls that age. She was wearing Daisy Duke shorts and fireman suspenders. She pointed at the chair next to me.

“Oh,” I stuttered, still staring at the girl as if she were some kind of alien. She stared right back. Finally, getting the hint, I moved my books.

She sat down next to me.

For the next twenty minutes, I gazed out the window. Studying the passing townhouses and fenced-in lots as intently as I would have the TV. The bus pulled into a turn around and let us out. Only after the girl had left did I try to move. The squeak of my keister on the leather seats startled the bus driver, he had thought everyone was gone.

Henry David Thoreau was nothing like my old school. For one this wasn't elementary school anymore. No, this was junior high. Whereas my old school had had an armed guard who sat near the entrance, this place had unlocked doors. Instead of walking through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods, everyone here was shipped in by the bus. It all seemed kind of like having a chauffeur. Which was nice. Why then, I wondered, did I feel so unwell?

That first day of school is always a whirlwind. New teachers. New subjects. New hallways. Pay attention. Read these chapters. Are you listening, kids? Test at the end of the week. At lunch I sat by myself eating a peanut butter sandwich which my Mom had packed specially for me. All of the other kids were buying food at the cafeteria. I could smell the grease in the air. It smelled delicious. I nibbled on my meal. Across the way was a group of especially rowdy boys. 

One of them seemed to be the leader. This kid with spiked up hair, a death metal t-shirt and muddy engineer boots. Every ten seconds he would say something, real quiet like, and other kids at the table would burst into laughter. The boy looked up, spying me. I ducked my head, consumed in my lunch. But when I looked up again there he was, smiling at me. He was telling jokes that the others were whooping and hollering at. But he kept glancing over, at me. As if I was something worth watching.

After lunch it was more classes. Algebra. Then English. Then Spanish. The bell rang again, loud as a jackhammer and twice as fast. By this time I felt like how wet socks in a dryer must feel. I slogged my way up through one of the hallways, still mostly lost, and sat down in what was thankfully the last class of the day. 

The room, I had to admit, was interesting at least. I had taken a seat all the way in the back. Near the windows. There was an aquarium here. As I watched a fiery salamander inside waddled over some rocks, tried its best to climb the walls, then fell back into the water again. Splunk! Next to this was a terrarium, like a miniature desert. Inside of this one was the weirdest looking tortoises that I had ever seen. It had a long, curly tail. Like one of those party blowers that you get in goodie bags.

A man walked in. He seemed even goofier than the animals. If Doc Brown and Hugh Laurie had had a love child and that baby had grown up overnight it would have looked like this man. The laboratory coat he was wearing was ruffled and had probably never been washed. There were ink stains and pit stains and stains of unidentifiable origin on it. The man shuffled to the front of the room. Without saying a word, he picked up a piece of chalk and wrote in big, shaky letters the word ‘LIFE’.

“Good afternoon class,” the man said. “My name is Professor Oak. And this is biology, the study of life.”




  
  



	2. Gary

**Gary**

“Where do we start?” the professors said, “Well if there is one fundamental concept in biology, one cornerstone upon which all the rest is built, it is this. Survival of the Fittest. That holy imperative for living things to continue to exist, for as long as such time allows. From this idea, survival of the fittest, we get life's most interesting phenomenon. Evolution. A natural selection of variation that produces creatures more suited to their environment then their predecessors were before them…”

The teacher droned on and I just kinda tuned it out. It was too late in the day for anyone to be expected to pay attention anyway. As far as I was concerned, this was all extra credit at this point. I was leaning with my head on my palm. Dozing off. I looked over at the terrarium. That turtle was still there. Staring at me. I sat up. No, it wasn’t looking at me. It was looking at my water bottle. I pushed the bottle away from him, over to the other end of the table. The turtle followed it.

“Weird,” I said. The kid next to me looked over, assuming that I was talking to him, then back at the professor.

After school I shoved all my books in the locker, all except my math book. Who gave homework on the first day? Ms. Owens apparently, that's who. Then I took the bus. I got off at the corner of Route 1 and Birch Drive. I walked up Birch.

Back in Chicago we didn’t have trees like this. I could see why they called it Birch drive. The grove to my left was filled with them. Tall, slender trees, chalk white, as if some giant had planted giant pieces of bone end up into the ground. The dirt road was still dusty from the ferocious autumn heat. My sweat made the dust cling to my skin. The sun was still high overhead but also somehow directly on my neck. And I realized, quite suddenly, that I hated it here. That I wished we had never moved. But mom had lost her job so we had had to…

On the plane I had read about the town. Pallet Town. My mom had bought me a book about it because she knew I loved to read and it distracted me from how scared I got on planes. Pallet was founded by settlers in the 1870's who came out of Kansas City and mostly trafficked in cattle. There were 28,366 people in this town, a number which made my skin itch but looking from one end of the corn fields to the next, you wouldn't believe there were more than ten.

I scanned the horizon. Hills. Orchards. Hemlock. People. The group stood out like a sore thumb, a group of individuals not quite as tall as adults but all taller than me. I had been too busy day dreaming to notice them but they were just up the road, lounging against a tree, next to the barbed wire perimeter of a farm. There was a car too. A beat up Pontiac Firebird which was held together more by rust than metal. One of the kids stood up as I approached. It was the boy from the cafeteria. He stepped out into the road. Blocking me.

"Yo. Hold up, kid."

I stopped.

"You're new here, right?"

I opened my mouth. Then closed it. I didn't know what to say.

“What’s your name?”

“Ash.”

“What kind of a name is Ash?”

I blinked.“It's the one my mom gave me?”

The boy laughed and turned to his friends. “Its the one is momma gave him.” He turned back to Ash. “Well, I’m gonna call you soot. Do you have a problem with that Soot?”

“No.”

“Yeah, I thought not. Anyway the reason I stopped you is to introduce myself and to make something clear. My name is Gary. That's Matt, Ross and Charlie. You're new here so it's important you understand something. This school, it’s our school. And this town is our town. And just because you moved here doesn’t make you one of us.”

“...” I stood there. Waiting for him to let me go. But he just looked at me.

“Is he trying to be funny?” one of the kids asked. Gary stepped closer.

“Say something else.”

“Wha...at?” I stuttered.

“Say something longer than one word.”

“I…”

“He can’t," another kid yelled.

“Look at him, he’s crying.”

“Stop crying. Be a man.”

Gary shoved me and I fell back onto the dirt. The rocks dug into my hands. My head bounced off like a basketball and I reflexively curled over. This seemed to only make my attacker that much more angry. He kicked me. Hard. In the kidney. I gasped.

“Get up,” Gary said.

I shrunk more. He kicked me again. And again. The other kids were laughing. I didn’t understand it. I hadn’t done anything. I hadn’t said anything. Why was this happening? Gary grabbed me by the hair, lifting my head off the ground. I could see his eyes. They were green and crazy. He punched me in the face and I blacked out.

When I woke up it was still light out. The boys were gone. The Pontiac gone. I was alone, standing on the road two miles from my house with a black eye and aches all over. Somehow, I limped home. Wincing, I fished out the latchkey that hung from a chain around my neck. I let myself in. It was dark and quiet in the house because my mom was still at work. She had told me before I left the house that she would not be back before 7PM but that there was a frozen dinner in the fridge and no TV until I had finished all of my homework. So naturally, the first thing I did when I got home was turn on the TV. Extra loud. Then I went into the kitchen, making myself some chocolate milk, listening to a commercial about a Japanese robot toy, and generally feeling a little bit better. I opened the fridge. There was indeed a frozen dinner, steak and mashed potatoes. Yum. I took some ice cubes too, for my eye. Then sat down. I was in luck! Dragon Ball Z was on next.

There was a sound. A clattering, like pots and pans, from the kitchen. I ignored this. Turned the TV louder. It was probably just mom rummaging around for...I bolted upright. Mom wasn’t home. Nobody was home, except me. But something had made that sound.

I poked my head into the kitchen. A 1950’s style refrigerator quietly hummed in the corner. Next to this was the radiator, and a windowsill with two potted plants basking in the sunlight. There was the table, my mom had left a magazine half-open on the top of this along with an empty glass of water. The counter was mostly bare. Mom had tossed the toaster and they had yet to unpack the spices, knife rack or teapot. Some dishes in the sink, a rag hanging over the side, where the cabinet door was slightly ajar.

More clattering. There was something under the sink. I could see something, moving in the shadows. It was fast. Careful not to make too much noise, I tiptoed closer. Then flung open the cabinets.

It was a rat. At least I thought it looked like a rat. Some kind of zombie rat. It had no fur. Just sickly, yellow skin, which was covered in welts and bruises. There were two of these bruises on its cheeks, like harlequin make up. And in between these spots, four incisors, each as big as my index finger. It hissed at me.

I stepped back.

"Whoa," was all I had time to say before it attacked.

The rat lunged at me and I froze. It was all a blur and over before it even started. I was on the floor, twitching. The creature had raced for my foot, my left foot, and sunk its teeth into my ankle before I had even realized what was happening. No sooner had this happened then I collapsed. My knees just...buckled in. And I started convulsing, flopping around like an anoxic fish. My mouth was frothing. My arms flailing. Every bump made that much worse by my other injuries only a couple hours old at this point. I was vaguely aware that the rat was coming closer. Near to my head. It looked rabid and mad.

Then the sound of a key turning and my mother opening the door. She must have seen my feet from the door cause she screamed and the rat disappeared somewhere out of view.

"Baby! Oh baby. Oh no, no, no…"

She picked me up in her arms, cradled me like the Pieta. I was shaking but coming around. I looked up at her. She looked down at me. I threw up.





End file.
